Thread by @Neoavatara

While places such as the U.S. and Europe are learning to live with Covid-19, other countries see even one case as one too many wsj.com/articles/as-co… via @WSJ

Every one of the success stories are either authoritarian (China and North Korea...people forget about latter), or island or remote locale that put in strict border restrictions early, with massive testing of all in coming visitors.

Europe and the US were unwilling to do either.

Clearly the Democratic nations of the West were not going to lock up people in their apartments, or let some people die, to solve the pandemic like China did.

But we COULD have closed our borders, quarantined anyone that came in for 14 days, and tested them all vigorously.

As I've documented before...on February 1 (the day after Trump put border restrictions into effect, and approx when Biden said he knew the threat of the pandemic) he tweeted the following:

https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1223727977361338370?s=20

The problem is not Biden's alone. Plenty of leaders in the US, and through out Europe, gave the same response; not only for COVID, but for Ebola. Obama's team made this argument widely during the Ebola epidemic, for example.

First, we need to stop being so closed minded. Closing the borders is NOT racist or xenophobic. In this case, it was scientifically defensible. Even scientists I know that generally don't like border closures agree with that now.

Second, we should not let emotional, unscientific impulses dictate our policy. On Jan 30th, if we had closed ALL of our borders (air, water, borders with Canada and Mexico) we probably would have been better off.

Would it have solved the pandemic? No. The virus had been here since December. But it might have slowed the progress.

We keep on talking about success stories in Asia, but refuse to learn any of their lessons. That is idiocy.

And this isn't even about Biden alone. If he wins tonight, he will have to course correct...and that correction will have to accept he and his party were wrong about these policies, and not following the science.